


Everything We Need

by glorious_clio



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Spoilers, get back up again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/pseuds/glorious_clio
Summary: Leia finds herself back at the beginning, wondering how to go on.All the spoilers for The Last Jedi. All of them.





	Everything We Need

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen this movie twice now, and am still processing it. These are my initial thoughts beyond the incoherence of CARRIE. 
> 
> Written quickly and unbeta'd.

Most of the Resistance is asleep in the belly of the _Millenium Falcon_ , curled in corners, clustered together in tightknit groups. Rey had found her way back to Finn’s side, then Poe joined them. They were tucked under the medbay that cradled Rose.

Leia had once tended to Luke there, she thought, turning away from them.

How many times had she lost everything _everything_ only to find herself aboard the _Falcon_.

" _They hate that ship!”_ she’d heard Finn shout over the comms in the battle.

That had hurt, some of her favorite memories were taking Ben for a spin aboard the old freighter. She’s still the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. Ben’s- _Ren’s_ \- rejection of the _Falcon_ was the same as his rejection of everything else.

But he’d let her live, not twenty hours ago. She pushes the thought away. His hesitation had only opened the window for others to do the job for him. Hesitation, or even feigning neutrality like her old allies, had been worse in the long run, and she felt weakened, old, tired.

She put on hope like an old jacket and rallied the troops anyway.

Leia stands, her hand on the wall as she makes her way through the familiar corridors of the _Falcon_. She knows them, it’s woven into her heart now. She follows her past selves to the galley, rummages in a cupboard until she finds and old box of her favorite tea. It’s no doubt stale, the box is dusty, but she’s lived long enough to know it won’t kill her. Probably. She boils a kettle and pours it over the tea bag in a battered old mug and goes to find Chewie.

“You should get some rest,” she says, entering the cockpit. She scoots to the Captain’s seat. It doesn’t feel like a betrayal to sit here, she’s piloted the _Falcon_ so many times. Sometimes alone, even. She likes sitting in the co-pilot spot, the specially altered seat for Chewie engulfs her every time she’s used it, but it’s the only spot he fits in here.

She rested her fingers on the controls and thinks of Han. “What did you do to her?” she asks his memory, but in her mind, Han just gives her that cocky smile she loved so much. It’s just memories, she’s never really been able to feel Han through the Force. Leia shakes her head to clear it. The _Falcon_ is humming under her fingertips like it lives. Maybe it does, maybe she’s strong in the Force too.

She takes her fingers away and picks the mug back up.

Chewie’s said nothing, and they sit in silence together, so much unspoken between them. First Han, now Luke. They’re the only two left from the fight against the darkness. Chewie fought in the Clone Wars, Leia was born the day they ended, the day the rebellion began.

They stay there, daring the blur of stars to make them space-blind until Poe and Rey come to relieve them, pushing them out of the cockpit.

She and Chewie go willingly for the most part, and when Rey locks the door behind them, Chewie rests a giant paw on Leia’s head, his favorite gesture of comfort. Leia lets the weight of it steep into her for a moment and then says, “I’m going to bed. Wake me up when we land somewhere.”

He growls in response.  Chewie finds his way into the captain’s quarters - always his because Han gave him the biggest bunk years and years and years ago. He was always more interested in practicality than status. Leia makes her way to the First Mate’s bunk, where she shared a life and a love with him for years and years.

His junk is still scattered around, like someone had ransacked it, looking for something. Leia shrugs out of her dress and, finding an old shirt of his (smelling way too musty to justify wearing it because it smelled like him), crawls into sheets of questionable cleanliness.

She aches and _aches_. For her brother, her husband, her son, for Bail and Breha and Alderaan, an old wound never closed. For the Hosnian System and every single life force snuffed out in the last 48 standard hours.

Too long, she thinks. This has gone on for far too long.

But she would rest, secure in the memory of Han, aboard his old freighter with the illegal modifications and the rag tag bunch of kids crazy enough to follow her. And tomorrow, she’d begin again, with nothing but an old dirty dress, and a Corellian ship that was too old to be taken seriously.

It’s everything she needs.


End file.
